Every purchase has power.

Products & Partners

The Fair Trade Certified label helps you make choices, with the confidence that your product is socially and environmentally sustainable. While best known for coffee, Fair Trade Certified has grown to encompass many products, from tea to chocolate to body care to wine. Choose Fair Trade products to vote with your dollars and make Every Purchase Matter.

Making Your Purchase Matter.

Each time you purchase a fair trade product you help support families and causes all over the world.

Fair Trade expands from the kitchen to the closet with introduction of Fair Trade Certified apparel and home goods. For the first time, U.S. consumers can walk into a store and choose an ethical tee over one made in a sweatshop.

The beauty of Fair Trade lies in its flexibility and unlimited potential for creativity. Body care brands are tapping into this opportunity to feature numerous Fair Trade Certified ingredients in their top of the line beauty products. Fair Trade ingredients such as shea butter, cocoa butter, olive oil, honey, sugar, and plant extracts have now found their way into your beauty routine. From lip balms to moisturizers to sugar scrubs, add a touch of Fair Trade and see where it can transport you.

Even though Americans spend $16 billion a year on decadent cocoa products, small-scale family cocoa farmers face tremendous instability. They are often forced to sell their harvest to local middlemen who use rigged scales or misrepresent world prices, and media reports of child slavery show the stark contrast between the delicious treat we enjoy and the difficult working conditions of the people who produce it. Fair Trade certification ensures that cocoa farmers receive a fair price for their harvest, creates direct trade links between farmer-owned cooperatives and buyers, and provides access to affordable credit. Fair Trade strictly prohibits slave and child labor, and farms are inspected to ensure that Fair Trade standards are met. And Fair Trade allows cocoa farmers to invest in techniques that bring out the individual flavors of the region and ensure the highest quality, most flavorful beans.

The rich, dark waters of freshly brewed Fair Trade coffee hold within them the key for thousands of farmers to escape poverty, and a taste that is without equal. Fluctuations in world coffee prices create unstable living conditions for millions of farmers around the world. Most small-scale family farmers live in remote locations and lack access to credit, so they are vulnerable to local middlemen (known as "coyotes" in Latin America) who offer quick cash for their coffee, at a fraction of its value. Fair Trade guarantees farmers a set minimum price for their coffee to cover the cost of production, and links farmer-run cooperatives directly with U.S. importers, cutting out middlemen and creating the conditions for long-term sustainability. Through Fair Trade, farmers and their families earn better incomes for their hard work. This allows them to hold on to their land, keep their kids in school, and invest in the quality of their harvest so they can continue to grow high-quality coffee for your morning brew.

Fair Trade Certified flowers make vibrant bouquets and help farming communities thrive. Fair Trade flower workers receive fair wages and benefits that allow them to give back to those around them through health care, education and loans. In an industry where women often face discrimination, Fair Trade farms encourage women workers to pursue leadership roles, and also receive paid maternity leave and a guarantee of their job upon their return. Fair Trade flowers are grown without harsh pesticides and growers use agricultural techniques that promote a healthy environment.

Fair Trade Certified™ fruits and vegetables bring together the best of both worlds. They create healthy, happy farming communities and ecosystems, and deliver the healthiest, most flavorful produce to consumers. Fair Trade Certified fruit is grown in nutrient-rich soil that is free of harsh pesticides by small farmers and plantation workers, who pick their crops with care. Fair Trade farms produce some of the best organic and conventional produce in the world, including bananas, mangoes, pineapple and grapes.

Fair Trade provides communities with a mix of greater stability and hope for their futures. Thousands of small scale farmers grow spice and herb crops, yet industry consolidation has allowed two large, multi-national firms to dominate the global market. Beyond that, small farmers are vulnerable to many of the common problems in the agricultural trade. The demand and prices of spices and herbs fluctuate with global weather patterns, past production levels, and changes in consumer and manufacturer preferences. However, with Fair Trade standards for herb and spice production, small farmers receive a price that covers their costs of sustainable production, as well as a premium to invest in social and economic projects for their communities.

Blending high-quality Fair Trade ingredients into food and body care products multiplies the possibilities for what can be considered Fair Trade and expands the horizon for farming communities around the world. Many of the delicious and top quality Fair Trade products you buy are chock full of Fair Trade Certified ingredients, from coffee ice cream to chocolate chip energy bars. However, these products often include ingredients that cannot be Fair Trade Certified, due to their domestic origin (like milk in ice cream). For these mixed products, Fair Trade USA has a special and very specific set of standards for what can be labeled "Fair Trade" so you have all the information you need when deciding which great Fair Trade products to purchase.

A full line of Fair Trade nuts and high-quality Fair Trade olive oils are now available for the first time in the U.S. market. Nutritious, yet delicate treats like almonds, cashews, walnuts, and peanuts are too fragile to be processed by machine and require detailed work to be done by hand. Workers in farms and processing factories spend long hours on repetitive tasks for little pay and receive poor treatment. Fair Trade promises a better wage for workers, one that enables them to feed their family and send their kids to school. Additional social premiums get invested in community development and bring health care, education and a brighter future to the whole town. Quality and care come together in every drizzle of Fair Trade Certified olive oil. Most of the world’s olive oil comes from crops grown in the Mediterranean basin. Olives are a difficult crop to grow because they are sensitive to the environment and require a large overhead; olive trees take several years to mature and bear fruit. Many olive oil producers struggle to absorb changes in the market and stay above poverty. Fair Trade Certified olive oil brings marginalized small farmers together to sell directly to international buyers. With the financial security of fair prices, olive growers can focus on traditional farming methods that deliver the finest olive oil possible.

Like their developing country counterparts in agriculture, many fishing communities struggle to sustain and improve their livelihoods while responsibly managing their resources. There are 120 million people working in primary & secondary fish livelihoods. 90% of this labor force is based in the global south and small-scale fishing boats catch over half of global fish supply. This represents a $70B global business of over 100M metric tons of fish traded per year. If you are currently working with, or know of, a fishery where the fishermen, community, and local resources could benefit from Fair Trade, please fill out our questionnaire.

It doesn't get any sweeter than sustainably-grown Fair Trade sugar. Since 2005, Fair Trade Certified sugar has created direct links between sugar farmers and U.S. consumers to combat poverty and isolation created by international trade laws and global price pressures. Fair Trade sugar has the potential to be used in many products, and to increase wages and community development funds for struggling farmers. Small sugar cane farmers are some of the most impoverished in the world as a result of fluctuating prices and difficulty accessing the U.S. market. By connecting directly to buyers, Fair Trade farmers are able to improve the lives of their families and the quality of their products. Add some Fair Trade sweetness to your day, and bring a smile to the faces of small farmers from the Philippines to Malawi.

A few years ago, wine sales surpassed beer for the first time in U.S. history. but this growing demand has not necessarily filtered down to support workers and farmers in wine growing regions around the world. With Fair Trade, wine growers in Argentina, Chile and South Africa can now rely on stable incomes, which support their abilities to provide for their families, pay workers fairly, and provide working environments that are safe and free from child labor, forced overtime and harassment. In addition to being grown in more humane environments for workers, these wines are grown sustainably to reduce harmful effects on the earth. The quality of wine depends a great deal on the care put into growing the grapes. When grapes are grown sustainably, in nutrient-rich soil without harmful pesticides, the result is a delicious wine that benefits the land and the communities that live and depend on it.

Innovation

Geographic Expansion

For the last 15 years Fair Trade USA has worked primarily in the developing world, empowering farmers and farm workers to fight poverty and improve their lives through better trade. Through this journey we’ve also become all too aware of the challenges and injustices faced by laborers in the global north. Issues like low pay, unsafe working conditions, exposure to harmful agrochemicals, child and forced labor, and sexual harassment are unfortunately without borders in the agricultural sector.

These realities, many occurring in our own backyard, have driven a growing interest from consumers, companies, farms, NGOs and retailers to explore the possibility of Fair Trade in a broader global setting.

To learn more about this opportunity, Fair Trade USA began conducting preliminary research and consulting with stakeholders back in 2009. Our goal was to better understand agriculture in different regions, identify key issues, and learn about other Fair Trade initiatives already in development. Through this exploration we found that farm work remains among the most dangerous and lowest paying occupations anywhere in the world, not just in the global south. Our hypothesis was that the Fair Trade model has the potential to create new opportunities and benefits for those left behind by the industrialized farming economy.

To continue this work, we’ve recently partnered with a grower in Canada, on a hands-on learning journey to find out what Fair Trade might mean for the 100+ farm workers employed there (the majority of whom migrate from Central America on temporary work visas), as well as for their families and communities back home. With the implementation of the Fair Trade standards come important benefits to workers, specifically around areas like health and safety, gender equality, working hours, recruitment best practices, and freedom of association.

We’ll be sharing regular updates on our work online at www.FairTradeUSA.org if people want to learn more. Please stay tuned, and feel free to send any questions or comments to Monica Hamlett, Supply Chain Manager of Produce and Floral: mhamlett@fairtradeusa.org

Jewelry

We love our baubles and our beads, but consider the social and environmental challenges faced by workers in the less than sparkling jewelry industry. In particular, two products have received major public scrutiny for common, yet questionable business practices: precious metals and diamonds. Issues these industries face include but are not limited to: sourcing in conflict zones, forced labor, unsupported migratory worker populations, lack of transparent pricing, environmental degradation, and health and safety issues.

Diamonds Fair Trade USA completed a feasibility study for the certification of diamonds in 2009, with the support of the Tiffany & Company Foundation. The study identified specific development needs for diamond-producing and manufacturing organizations, as well as considerations for developing standards to address them. Although not actively developing this program, Fair Trade USA remains interested in providing a mechanism to empower workers along the diamond supply chain through a more transparent, equitable system. If your company is ready to take the lead on socially- and environmentally-responsible sourcing in the industry, please contact innovation@fairtradeusa.org for more information.

Gold, Associated Silver and Platinum Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) partnered with the Association of Responsible Mining (ARM), to develop Fair Trade and Fairmined Certified gold, the world’s first independent ethical certification system for gold and associated precious metals. The dual certification will enable designers, retailers, fabricators and distributors, to offer customers the assurance that their products are responsibly mined. It positions companies at the cutting edge of industry innovation, and demonstrates their commitment to fair sourcing practices to customers, suppliers and stakeholders such as trade bodies and government. Fair Trade USA is exploring the potential to launch the program in the United States in 2011. To review Fair Trade Fairmined standard, please visit ARM’s website.